Influences

Thinking more about Bond and The Walking Dead and the tone of the cultural touchstones at the moment and surprised by how dark our national mood has become.  Looking back, at least artistically, it strikes me the two earliest and most influential voices that properly express our current cultural tone are Alan Moore and Cormac McCarthy.  Specifically, I am thinking of The Killing Joke and Watchmen  for Moore and Blood Meridian for McCarthy.

The Killing Joke was published in 1988 and Watchmen in 1987.  Blood Meridian was published in 1985 and is probably McCarthy's magnum opus (along with the Border trilogy) with themes he later explored in tighter, shorter stories:  No Country For Old Men and The Road.  But Blood Meridian was the major introduction to this noir western tone and the earliest work people seem to talk about - at least popularly.

Moore's Joker is what influenced Nolan's Batman trilogy and this McCarthy tone has found itself reaching all the way to Bond, if you ask me.

I wonder what was happening in 1985-1988 and where these visions came from.  And why are they influential now?  The Soviet Union wasn't even done yet.